RCTs have become popular in the development community as part of the response to the results agenda. These studies are well placed to address the question of which programmes work or not. And, properly designed, they can be embedded in a broader evaluation design which also addresses questions...

Social funds have been one of the main manifestations of the World Bank's move toward promoting projects with a participatory orientation. Supporters of social funds argue that participation in social fund activities builds community social capital. Critics of the Bank's use of social capital...

Is development best achieved by going for growth, or does specific attention need to be paid to directly improving human welfare? In contrast to the Human Development Reports of the UNDP, the World Bank has stressed the growth approach. Recent work has reinforced this position by arguing that...

This paper highlights the key characteristics of the quantitative and qualitative approaches to poverty measurement and analysis, examines the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and analyzes the potential for combining the two approaches in analytical work on poverty. The main conclusion...

The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is a new organisation devoted to enhancing development effectiveness through supporting the production and use of evidence from rigorous impact studies. This paper outlines the theory of change that underlies 3ie's mission and the...

Calls for rigorous impact evaluation have been accompanied by the quest not just to find out what works but why. It is widely accepted that a theory-based approach to impact evaluation, one that maps out the causal chain from inputs to outcomes and impact and tests the underlying assumptions,...

For a large sample of 61 developing countries, over the period 1980-95, we calculate a measure of the efficiency with which national political-economic systems convert a given volume of material resources (GNP per capita) into human development (longevity, education and literacy) for their...